As many of you may recall, last October, in Zanesville, Ohio, the owner of a backyard menagerie opened the cages of his tigers, leopards, lions, wolves, bears and monkeys before killing himself, giving police no choice but to shoot and kill nearly 50 animals – 38 of them big cats – before they could enter populated areas of the community.

A new coalition of environmental groups and notable people, the Antarctic Ocean Alliance (AOA), launched its first report, “Antarctic Ocean Legacy: A Marine Reserve for the Ross Sea”, at a reception for Parliamentarians and guests in Wellington today. The report outlines a proposal and rationale for a fully protected marine reserve in the Ross Sea, to become the keystone of the world’s largest network of marine protected areas and no-take marine reserves in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica.

Chattel, in case you haven’t suffered through a property class in law school, is a word that simply means “movable property.” The chair I’m sitting on is chattel, the incredibly loud vacuum cleaner I’m attempting to ignore in my neighbor’s apartment is chattel, and the one-eyed cocker spaniel lying on my foot is chattel. My dog, by traditional legal definition, is a thing with the same inherent rights as my chair.